The Williamstown Theatre Festival has named playwright Beth Hyland as the recipient of this year's L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award, honoring her play Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia.
Hyland will receive a $10,000 award, plus the $10,000 Jay Harris Commission to write a new play. Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia will also be presented as a reading at the Festival this summer as part of their Fridays@3 reading series, showcasing new works in development.
Hyland's tragicomic play explores women's creativity and madness as love and art collide with supernatural consequences. A once-celebrated novelist in the throes of writer's block and fleeting fame as she is overshadowed by her husband's rising literary success retreats to a Boston apartment once inhabited by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, seeking solace and inspiration. But things take a haunted turn when she begins experiencing encounters that challenge her perception of reality.
The L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award is named for the theatrical attorney of the same name, who championed new playwrights. Previous recipients have included Clarence Coo for Chapters of a Floating Life (2023), Mike Lew for tiny father (2022), John J. Caswell, Jr. for Wet Brain (2021), and Sanaz Toossi for English (2020).
Submissions for the award are invitation only and are carefully evaluated by a team of readers over the course of six months. Finalists are judged by a panel comprising WTF artists Jennifer Chang and Lee Sunday Evans, and Williams College faculty member Karen Shepard.
